It is well known that many tasks such as: the construction of driveways, roadways, and asphalt surfaces; the back filling of retaining walls; and the distribution of aggregate, mulch, soil and the like, can be extremely labor intensive. For example, delivery of aggregate to a roadway construction site typically involves: (i) loading a dump truck at an aggregate storage facility, (ii) transporting the aggregate to the construction site, (iii) dumping the aggregate in a mound, (iv) manually filling a wheelbarrow, (v) wheeling the aggregate to a selected location, and (iv) dumping the wheelbarrow load at that location. Each of these steps involves a great deal of time and labor. Furthermore, at each of these steps material may be spilled, wasted or otherwise strewn about the construction site. This waste results in an unsightly and potentially environmentally hazardous construction site and can create a potential road hazard if gravel material is picked up by the tires of passing vehicles and thrown into the air. This picked-up material can injure unprotected pedestrians or damage property such as the windshields of passing vehicles.
To address the inefficiencies inherent in these steps, a number of mobile material placers have been designed. Certain of these known mobile placers include an auxiliary power train and an auxiliary steering system to enable remote operation of the vehicle. The auxiliary power train or drive train enables an operator to drive the vehicle back and forth at a controlled velocity. The auxiliary steering system enables an operator to remotely rotate the steering column to turn or steer the moving vehicle.
Certain known auxiliary steering systems unitize an indirect driving mechanism to rotate the steering column. These auxiliary steering systems having an indirect steering drive generally incorporate a sprocket, chain and jackshaft combination. However, when the material placer is operated, foreign material or the conveyed material, such as sand, rocks or dirt can become caught or otherwise interfere with the moving parts of the auxiliary steering mechanism. In particular, the material may become caught between the chain, sprocket and jackshaft. This causes excessive wear of the indirect driving mechanism, thus leading to high costs in replacement parts and increased downtime. When the steering angle changes with the known chain and sprocket system, binding or breakage in the moving parts can occur which can cause reliability issues. Moreover, slack in the chains can cause reduced steering precision.
It would be advantageous to provide a system, apparatus and/or method that addresses these limitations and simplifies the process of constructing and/or maintaining a roadway or distributing material around a construction site.